


Manifest Emotion

by Rosie_Rues



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Magic Realism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-01 11:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11485095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosie_Rues/pseuds/Rosie_Rues
Summary: AU, where everyone has at least one emotion that physically manifests on their skin. Otherwise, all is as it is in canon. Or, Yuuri's anxiety covers him in frost, but Victor's watching his heart turn to ice, and they need each other so very much.





	1. Chapter 1

The first snowflake shows up on Victor’s thumbnail when he’s eighteen. At first he thinks it’s rather pretty, a little shimmering star of ice against the pink of his nail. He knows what it means, though—knows what others will think. So he paints his nails before the final and when he spots an awestruck Swiss teenager he throws him a flower and turns his smile up high enough to make a clearly-needed friend.

For a while, that helps.

But soon the snowflakes spread, covering his nails and creeping across the back of his hands in glittering webs. He commissions costumes that include gloves, reaches out to his rinkmates, smiles and smiles and smiles, and tries to convince himself that he is not lonely, whatever the marks on his skin may claim. He had rinkmates. He has rivals. He has his coaches. He has a dog.

And he has winning. The sparkling patterns on his skin may be silver, but the medals around his neck are gold, gold, gold. Surely that’s worth a little loneliness?

He’s twenty three when the first snowflake appears on his face, a tiny speck that gleams below the corner of his eye like a tear. Victor regards it in the mirror and can’t find it in himself to care. He only cares about the ice these days, and even that feels like he’s looking through clouded glass. At least this is one surprise his audience won’t be expecting.

Yakov is upset when he sees it, which vaguely surprises Victor. He switches his smile on, tries to reassure his coach—thinks he has done well until Yakov’s eyebrows catch fire (not the first time Victor has caused that, but it’s usually his skating that’s at fault). Victor offers his own water bottle and a towel to put them out, makes a joke, flicks his hair away from his eyes, and lands a perfect quad flip just to reassure Yakov that he’s not broken.

It doesn’t quite work, not on Yakov, but everyone else believes him when he smiles. At first, he glimpses pity in some eyes and so he builds his next season’s costumes around the loneliness written on his skin, dresses himself in glittering, silvery layers. He makes flirtatious remarks on live television about looking for someone to ease his loneliness and laughs a little when the ice is covered in thrown underwear the next time he skates. He’s relieved the first time he sees an article accusing him of faking the marks, but angry too—or, at least, as angry as he can get. Why would anyone choose to wear this brand, to pretend to feel like this?

Attention-seeking, they call him, indulged, spoilt, childish.

They may be right. He can’t find himself to care. Instead, he turns back to the ice, which defines him more and more with every year that passes. He sometimes wonders if the cold marks on his skin grant him some advantage, some affinity with the cold, graceful, unforgiving gleam of the ice. He loves it, as much as he can love anything, and it returns his love by letting him fly, again and again and again.

“Victor,” Chris says to him, solemn and sincere and very, very drunk, “you cannot fuck an ice rink. Find yourself a person.”

Victor is also very, very drunk, so he drops his head against Chris’ stomach and confesses, “People don’t seem to like me very much.”

“I like you.”

“But you’re in looooooove.” Victor likes the way that sounds. “Looooooooove. And not with me.”

“Do you want me to be in love with you?”

Victor scrunches up his face in disdain. “Chris. Chris, Chris, my friend, you are _not_ the ice.”

Chris waves his finger in front of Victor’s eyes. “And there, my beautiful idiot, lies the problem.”

Despite this, Victor likes spending time with Chris, and his boyfriend, who makes quite literally makes Chris’s eyes light up (useful when you’re all stumbling back to the hotel after far too much post-banquet clubbing). Chris makes the edges of the snowflakes melt, exposing the pink skin that lies beneath. Mila helps with that a little too, and Georgi, when he isn’t criss-crossed with the cracks of a broken heart, and little Yuri, whose rage at the world burns hot enough to melt even Victor’s ennui a little.

But none of them can stop the ice from spreading. Year after year, more and more snowflakes fall across his cheeks and spread across his hands.

And then there’s the ones above his heart. No one knows about them, not Yakov, not Chris, no one except Makkachin, who will never tell. The snowflakes over Victor’s heart are clustered so thickly that his skin is completely transparent. And not just his skin. Over the years, he has watched as muscle, bone, and lungs have all turned all clear as ice. Only his heart remains visible, brightly scarlet where everything else is a shimmering ghost. Victor sits in front of his mirror sometimes and watches it beat, obsesses over the colour of it, worries that it too is fading pinker every day.

One day, he knows, he will vanish entirely, becoming the ice which he loves so much.

He hopes someone will look after Makkachin.

Otherwise, he finds it harder and harder to care. Maybe this was just the way it was always meant to be.

Maybe he is nothing but what the ice has made of him.

 

Yuuri has always been at risk of frostbite.

It comes when he’s anxious, glittering specks of ice crawling across him, sometimes building to layers of white fluff that leave him shivering and clumsy.

He hates it, but he can’t escape it. Instead, he learns to manage it.

Skating with Yuuko, watching Victor Nikiforov, eating pork cutlet bowls, his puppy, hot springs, skating, dancing, the smell of Mari’s cigarettes, his favourite tatty hoodie, daydreaming about Victor Nikiforov, winning actual medals, airplane food (”So weird, Yuuri,” Phichit wails), the sound of Celestino humming when he’s in a good mood, really challenging step sequences, Phichit (a thousand times Phichit, who is sunshine and laughter and the best friend Yuuri ever had, but who also has days when he trips over the vines of homesickness tangling around his ankles and so understands), Victor’s Instagram, Victor’s Twitter account, Victor’s Facebook page, spinning around in his desk chair, spinning on ice (ever better), copious amounts of alcohol (”No, Yuuri, no, bad coping method,” Phichit mumbles but he’s shit-faced and giggly too), pole-dancing, wanking to pictures from Victor’s Instagram, terrible American junk food (”What is it?” Phichit asks in awe, poking it with a fingernail. “Did any part of it ever live?” Yuuri shrugs and inhales its sugary, salty, chemical goodness anyway), silly pictures of the triplets causing mayhem, Phichit’s hamsters, even that goddamned film, at least for the first three times in a row: these are the ways Yuuri makes the frost melt.

It leaves scars, little silvery blue freckles that cluster around his wrists and across his cheekbones. Sometimes he’s painfully jealous of people whose only manifest emotions are happy ones, but most of the time he’s used to it. He;s Katsuki Yuuri, dime-a-dozen Japanese figure skater and terribly average college student, prone to anxious frosts and over-eating, never quite in the top rank of world skaters (”Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuei!” Phichit wails at least once a week. “You just have to _believe_ in yourself!”).

The only time he really thinks about the frost as more than an inherent weakness of his own is when he sees the first pictures of the snowflakes glimmering on Victor’s cheeks. Unlike most of the internet, Yuuri never once believes they’re fake. He knows what the frost feels like, how it hurts before it fades, and his heart aches in sympathy. He reaches out, touches the picture of Victor on his laptop screen, and imagines, for just one moment, being the one to melt that mark of loneliness away.

But that’s ridiculous. Every Victor fan in the world must be thinking that, and he deserves better than Yuuri.

He feels the frost pinch his finger tips and closes the laptop, breathing on his hands and thinking about his step sequence instead.

If he ever even skates on the same ice as Victor, that will be enough. Sometimes Yuuri hopes that day will be the day his frosts desert him forever—the day he finally melts.

And if he sometimes wonders who will melt Victor, he can’t be blamed, can he? He hopes someone will. Someone as perfect and beautiful as Victor Nikiforov should never feel alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 and a change of title (sorry, sorry, but this attached itself to the story today and it works better than the one I came up with hastily yesterday). Here's the Sochi Grand Prix, through Yuuri's eyes, with all the sadness you'd expect :(

And then somehow, despite the frost, despite his own weakness and self-doubt, everything goes right for Yuuri, at least for a while. He comes second in Skate America, enthusiastically cheered on by Phichit by the side of the rink, and then takes gold in the NHK Trophy, perfectly balanced between the cheers of the home crowd and his own terror of failing them. And so, to his astonishment, he’s through to the Grand Prix final for the first time in his career, even though better skaters than him haven’t made it.

“They are not better than you!” Phichit tells him. “Otherwise they’d be there and you wouldn’t.”

“I was lucky in my assignments,” Yuuri tells him, rubbing his hands together to work out twinges of cold. “And I had good choreography and the others were off on the day. I’m not that talented—”

“—you just work hard because you’re a mere dime-a-dozen Japanese skater,” Phichit chants. “So you keep saying.”

Yuuri gives him an affronted look. He wouldn’t have to keep saying it if people would only listen the first time.

“One who just tripped and accidentally landed on the podium in every competition of his last junior year and hasn’t been out of the top fifteen in the world once in his senior career.”

“Thirteenth isn’t first.”

“It isn’t fourteenth, either. You’re going to the Grand Prix final! You could win it!”

Yuuri shudders a little, losing feeling in his feet as the frost bites down. “But Victor will be there!”

Phichit sighs, because even his relentless optimism can’t argue with that. “Well, you could take silver—and then seduce Victor as a consolation prize!”

“Phichit!” Yuuri squeaks, blushing so hard he’s pretty sure he’s now steaming from his fingertips.

Phichit waggles his eyebrows. “The two of you staying in the same hotel—”

“With every other competitor, coach, official, and—”

“Him, the world-weary champion—you, the nubile young challenger—”

Yuuri claps his hands over his ears and lets out a noise of shrill horror that has everyone in the rink staring at them.

Phichit pulls his hands away and continues, though he’s laughing too hard. “You, standing outside his door, wide-eyed and blushing, begging him, “Oh, teach me your ways of seduction, master—”

“Stop it!” Yuuri hisses. “I swear, I will reinstall the parental controls on your phone if you don’t stop right now!”

“You want it!” Phichit chants. “You know you want it.”

Yuuri’s pretty sure his blush could be spotted from orbit by now. If threatening his phone hasn’t shut Phichit up, the only way to beat him is to join him. Lifting his chin despite his blushes, Yuuri says, “It doesn’t matter that I want it. What matters is that it isn’t ever going to happen. Victor doesn’t even know who I am.”

And he escapes onto the ice, followed by the sound of Phichit’s delighted laughter. He lands his quad salchow three times in practice that afternoon, though, so he can’t find it in himself to mind the teasing all that much.

But as the final itself draws closer and closer, things get worse. He goes to sleep shivering and wakes up cold, frost turning his sheets stiff as he lies and worries. He goes through practice after practice with his cuffs so heavy they feel like steel and enough extra weight on his skates that it throws his balance off. He knows it shouldn’t matter—he’s dealt with this before, should know how to cope—but it just gets worse and worse. _He_ gets worse and worse. By the week of the final, he can only stay on the ice for a few minutes before he starts turning blue. Eventually, Celestino kicks him off the ice and sends him away to find something warm and relaxing to do.

Yuuri goes to the cinema, watches three films in a row, and eats more popcorn than he has in the last three years. He emerges with a pounding headache and a belly so bloated he imagines himself falling on the ice and then just lying there, stranded like an upside-down turtle, waving his arms and legs in midair in a helpless attempt to right himself.

He arrives at the airport in such a haggard state that Celestino stops trying to cheer him up long before they get on the first plane, simply buying cup after cup of steaming tea to put into Yuuri’s stiff and shaking hands. As soon as they take off from JFK Celestino gently suggests a sleeping pill and Yuuri is happy to comply. He sinks into comfortable oblivion and wakes up surprised to find its mid-morning. He can’t quite decided if he feels like he’s been cheated of sleep or has slept too long. He spends their layover in Moscow wrapped groggily around a cup of coffee and looking after their bags as Celestino manages to bump into several old friends. Yuuri kind of understands it this time, because most of the skaters flying into Sochi have to pass through Moscow, but he’s seen Celestino do the same thing in almost every international airport they’ve ever passed through and he just doesn’t understand how one person can know enough people in the world for that to be feasible.

“Yuri!”

It’s barked so loudly that Yuuri jumps and spills coffee all over himself before he realises it isn’t aimed at him. There’s a boy standing in front of him, small and blond and looking even groggier than Yuri feels. He sways from foot-to-foot, lifts his arm to point at Yuuri, and says, “I know who you are!”

It might have been a little more threatening if he hadn’t slurred half the words. Yuuri bites back the urge to giggle. Instead, he says, “I don’t know who you are.”

The kid’s face falls, in slow motion, and then tightens just as slowly into a scowl. “You… you…”

“Yuri!” It’s someone else this time, someone with laughter ringing through their voice, and Yuuri watches, wide-eyed, as Victor Nikiforov suddenly swoops out of the crowd to wrap his arm around the boy’s shoulders and say something in Russian.

“ _Idi nahui_ , _Victor,_ ” the boy slurs and Yuuri’s studied enough Russian to know that’s rude. He can’t quite process it, though, because Victor Nikiforov is right here.

In front of him.

Smiling.

Yuuri’s glasses frost over completely.

Victor exclaims something and then warm hands are plucking his glasses off. Yuuri stares up at Victor, so cold with panic he’s afraid he might be permanently frozen to the seat below him. Victor wipes his glasses for him and then hands them back with a gracious smile. “There you go. Sorry about Yuri. He gets a little fired-up sometimes.”

“Don’t… tell….people… that…”

Yuuri takes his glasses, hands shaking and sees Victor’s eyes widen briefly. His gloves must be covered in frost again.

“Uh,” he says and then makes a Herculean effort. “Don’t worry. I take sleeping pills on the plane too.”

He knows who the kid is now, though he’s never seen him in this state before. This is Yuri Plisetsky, who has been competing in the same competitions as Phichit for the last few years. Yuuri’s seen sparks rising from him on ice before and rumour has it that the ISU have threatened to ban him if he sets fire to another podium. Yuuri’s never wondered about how people with anger issues fly safely before, but the answer is pretty obvious in the way Plisetsky is slowly listing to one side, his left foot rising higher and higher in a stretch his tight jeans are not going to survive.

Victor catches the kid with one hand, tilting him back to earth, and flashes Yuuri another bright smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

“You…” Plisetsky says again, and then narrows his eyes, clearly making an effort. “You _suck_.”

Then, clearly satisfied with himself, he slumps against Victor’s side, blinking sleepily.

“So sorry,” Victor says, covering his mouth with his hand. “Ignore him. Sorry. Have a nice flight.”

And then he’s gone, towing Plisetsky in his wake, and Yuuri’s left with two realisations.

Victor has no idea who he is. Yuri Plisetsky, who does, despises him.

Yuuri looks down at his hands and watches dully as little glitters of frost form in every fold of his coat, bright and tight and sharp.

 

It’s not so bad once they actually get to Sochi. It helps that the Russian contingent exit the airport just ahead of them and Yuuri can clearly see Plisetsky being carried piggyback by one of the coaching staff, still asleep. Given some of the things Yuuri’s supposedly done whilst drunk, he can hardly hold a few doped up insults against the kid.

And, after all, Yuuri’s here, at the Grand Prix final, with Victor. That’s amazing in its own right.

He holds on to that sense of wonder as he practises, lingers beside the ice when his time is up just to watch the way the others move (but it’s Victor his gaze always comes back to—Victor whose grace and strength are so perfectly intermingled, Victor who always looks alone on the ice, as if the rest of them are mere insubstantial spirits in comparison.

The night before the short programme, Yuuri starts to shiver. That’s normal, though, so he wraps himself up in hotel blankets and huddles in bed, watching videos of Vicchan. His little dog isn’t a puppy any longer, but he’s still a bundle of energy. Mari sends videos every week—Vicchan running on the beach, sitting by the kitchen door and begging their mother for scraps with pleading eyes, stealing the newspaper from the table so Dad has to chase him all over the inn to get it back. Yuuri saves them all and watches them at times like this, when he needs to feel close to them all.

He misses home—his parents, his sister, his dog, the scent of the wind off the sea, the sound of Yuuko’s bright giggle, always underlain with Takeshi’s deeper chuckle. It’s been so long since he was there.

Frost pinches his little finger, and he deliberately changes that thought. Maybe he’ll go home this year. He probably can’t make it after Nationals, not with the Four Continents and the Worlds looming, but he’s only a few credits away from finishing his degree, so if he really works, he might be able to go home for a proper visit after the Worlds.

Home. It’s a good thought.

On screen, Mari says, “Wave to Yuuri, Vicchan!” and his dog, who has never been good at learning tricks, bursts into a flurry of squeaky barking instead, his tag wagging so fast it blurs, and Mari starts to laugh, her raspy giggle merging with Vicchan’s yaps.

Yuuri drifts off to sleep to that beloved, familiar sound.

The fear of frost haunts him all day, but he fights it with every trick which has ever worked. He’s skating second, and he warms up quietly, listening to his music and occasionally jumping when he looks up and sees Victor pacing through his routine right in front of him. They’ve occasionally been at the same competitions before, but never in the same round. There’s something oddly sweet and sad about being close enough to see the snowflakes shimmering on Victor’s cheeks.

They don’t look fake.

Snowflakes mean loneliness. Every manifest emotion site on the internet includes that one, often with one of Victor’s publicity shots as illustration. Yuuri wonders why no one has ever managed to melt them. Surely Victor, of them all, deserves to be loved.

The thought makes his own frost bite, and he closes his eyes and sinks back into the music.

Once he’s out on the ice, there’s a moment where the world starts contracting around him and he sees frost glint on the laces of his boots. He breathes in slowly, reminds himself that he can do this, and thinks of everyone watching at home, of the inn—his parents, Mari, the Nishigoris, Minako already sipping on a glass of wine, Vicchan running around in a frenzy, all the regulars grumbling at the change of channel but willing to cheer him on all the same. If he really focusses, he can imagine that they’re his only audience—that all the people in the stands simply don’t exist.

And then he skates.

It’s not the best he’s ever done with this routine, but it’s not the worst either, and he’s sitting in fourth as they go into the free programme, only a point behind Leroy.

That night, he dares to wonder if he might make it to the podium in his first final. He’s better in the free programme, after all. It rewards his stamina and gives him the scope to tell a story as he skates. He could nudge out Leroy, maybe even challenge Giacometti for silver. He could stand on the podium with Victor (because Victor will take gold—that he’s sure of).

And the frost, which has hovered at a distance all day, rushes over him so bitterly it hurts and he has to stuff his fist in his mouth to keep himself from screaming.

It’s a relief when his phone rings and he sees Mari’s name. He needs the familiar warmth of home.

But when he answers, her voice is shaking.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry, but we have to tell you ourselves, before you see it on social media. Yuuri, it’s Vicchan…”

And then the frost sets so hard that nothing will melt it. He tries, of course, fumbling clumsily into a hot shower which turns into steaming mist when it hits his icy skin. He drinks coffee so scalding that his throat hurts, but it doesn’t thaw his feet. Celestino wraps him in his own coat, which swamps Yuuri but doesn’t warm him.

His dog is dead and Yuuri’s never going to have a chance to see him again. He’s never going to go back the same home he left. He’s never going to be a returning hero, welcoming by everyone who loves him, family, friends, beloved pet. There will always be one of them missing.

And when he slides onto the ice, he’s already shivering so hard it throws off every movement. He stutters, stumbles, falls, comes off the ice with his skin turning blue. Even his tears freeze before they can warm his cheeks.

He hears the whispers, sees the concerned looks, but none of it helps. He knows what this looks like—knows it isn’t normal. Panic manifesting as frost is not uncommon, but most people never feel much more than tingling figures before a date or a trace of ice on their shoes during a job interview. His frosts are excessive, unnatural.

Weak, like him.

Somewhere in the icy haze of the next twenty-four hours, he has his second, equally disastrous, encounter with Yuri Plisetsky. He’s blithely patronised by Victor Nikiforov, who still doesn’t recognise him, even after Yuuri almost wrecked the ice Victor was about to skate on.

And he goes to the banquet, hides in the corner, and watches everyone who comes near him suddenly flinch and shiver.

At least he’s keeping the champagne cold, he think bitterly. Maybe that’s all he’s worth.

And he pours himself glass after glass of that icy, biting wine, hoping it might be enough to shatter the frost.

It isn’t, but he keeps trying, glass after glass after glass.

He doesn’t remember what happens next.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The banquet, through Victor's eyes.

“At least the champagne is cold this year,” Victor says to Chris, turning the stem in his hand to study the bubbles forming against the glass. It’s about as interesting as the banquet itself.

Chris grimaces. “Victor, I can forgive a lot of you, but even a Russian cannot possibly call this champagne.”

Besides them, Massimo laughs at them both. “Is this what you’ve come to—so used to winning all you care about is the quality of the—” He takes a sip and grimaces. “Okay, of the not-champagne.”

“See,” Chris says and curls his arm around Massimo’s waist, affection shining in his eyes. “You’re an even worse wine snob than I am, darling.”

“Is it possible?” Victor wonders aloud and takes another sip. It’s not that bad. He has a vague memory of one of the FFKK officials droning on about this earlier, so he adds, “I think it’s from a local vineyard.”

“Good God,” Massimo murmurs, not quietly enough.

“Russia has vineyards?” Chris asks incredulously. 

Victor should probably stand up for his country’s dignity, but he can’t bring himself to care. Instead, he shrugs slowly and says, “It’s cold. That’s good enough.”

Massimo says, looking worried, “I don’t think we can thank anyone official for that. Poor Yuuri.”

Chris cranes his head to see. “Is he here? That’s brave.”

Victor has no idea who they’re talking about. “What have I missed?”

“The existence of lesser mortals,” Massimo tells him, rolling his eyes. “Not for the first time.”

Victor pouts and complains, “Chris, tell your fiance to be nice to me.”

“Serves you right,” Chris says, though he’s barely paying attention. “Oh, dear. I think he’s drinking it as well as icing it over.”

Victor’s interest flickers. Ice? From someone else? He turns round to look.

There’s Japanese man by the drinks table who looks blue with cold. Frost climbs up his legs in cold spirals and glitters in his hair. His shoulders are hunched, and he’s rubbing half-heartedly at his arms.

“Who is he?” he asks.

Chris and Massimo give him identical disappointed looks. Chris says, “Really, Victor? I thought you at least recognised your fellow competitors?”

Oh. The boy who came last. Victor had registered him, of course, quiet and self-contained before the first event and quivering with cold anxiety before the second. He looks different in a suit—younger, even less confident. 

Massimo sighs. “I was talking to Celestino in the bar last night and he claims that if it wasn’t for his nerves, Yuuri could even beat Victor here.”

Victor laughs politely, because all coaches say such things, but Chris is nodding. He says to Victor, “He was five points away from me at the NHK Trophy.”

“Five points ahead of Chris,” Massimo clarifies, with a sunny smile that makes Chris pout.

Oh. Well, that’s more interesting. Victor takes a second look, just as the man raises his head. Victor recognises him at once—the fan who’d walked away from him in the lobby. Except, he clearly hadn’t been a mere fan. Oops.

Then, before he can decide what to do about that, he spots another disaster in progress. Fourteen year old Yuri Plisetsky is sidling up towards the drinks table, about as casually as a tiger in a china shop. Victor looks around for Yakov, sees him hemmed in by sponsors, and realises he’s the only one close enough to intervene. 

“Underage firestarters and free champagne do not a peaceful banquet make,” he says to Chris and Massimo. “Back in a moment.”

But the drunk Yuuri has already intervened, taking a swaying step forward to shake his finger in Yuri’s face.

Yuri (the Russian one) looks like he’s about to bite it off.

Victor gets close in time to hear Yuri (little Yuri? Angry Yuri?) demand furiously, “Get out of my way!”

“No,” drunk Yuuri says, swaying slightly. “No, nooooo. Nope. If you want a drink, you have to beat me.”

Angry Yuri says flatly, “You came last.”

Victor really needs to teach him how to be gracious in victory.

Drunk Yuuri waves his hand vaguely and leans forward to confide, “I’m too drunk to strap knives to my feet. No, you have to beat me at something else.”

“Drinking contest?” suggests angry Yuri, who hasn’t learnt much about cunning yet either.

Drunk Yuuri considers it, but then says firmly, “Dance off.”

“No way.”

Drunk Yuuri pats angry Yuri on the head, possibly not realising he is taking his life into his own hands. “Don’t think you can beat me, little matchstick?”

Angry Yuri’s hair catches fire. Drunk Yuuri giggles and puts it out with his frost-covered hands. “Tickles. Do it again.”

“I am  _not_ having a dance off with some drunken idiot in the middle of the banquet!”

Drunk Yuuri smiles very kindly and says earnestly, “It’s okay if you’re scared of losing. Everyone gets scared sometimes. I’m scared all the time.”

“I am not scared of you,” angry Yuri snarls. “I could beat you a thousand times even if you were sober!”

Drunk Yuuri smiles broadly, and suddenly all that gleaming ice doesn’t look sad at all. It looks dangerous. He says, rather dreamily, “Yeah? Prove it.”

Forget stopping this. Victor’s going to film it.

But then something  _amazing_ happens.

All logic says that drunk Yuuri should lose the dance-off. He’s clearly running on nothing but champagne, his dress shoes are covered in slippery frost, and well, angry Yuri might be little and obnoxious, but he is very, very good.

Instead, drunk Yuuri dances as if it’s the only thing that gives him life. He’s oddly serious about it, concentrating as he twists and spins, and Victor sees the moment when angry Yuri’s eyes widen in panic as he realises he’s outclassed. Drunk Yuuri is incredible—lithe, flexible, perfectly in sync with the music, and yet still clearly very drunk. He transforms from stumbling to flowing, liquid, graceful, and as he does something else happens.

He melts as he dances. 

His cheeks turn pink, the frost on his clothes fades into damp spots, and when angry Yuri stops to gasp for breath, he comes to his feet no longer cold and wretched but aglow with warmth and joy and confidence.

“Need a break?” he asks angry Yuri cheerfully. “Or are you giving up?”

“Never!” angry Yuri gasps, his suit smouldering slightly from the seams, and then they’re back at it.

In theory, Victor knows that anxiety frosts melt and reform. They’re an entirely different type of manifestation from the cold that marks him, even though they look alike. He’s never watched one melt before, though, and he feels his heart beat a little faster in his cold chest. He wants this. He wants to know how to melt.

By the time angry Yuri gives up and comes reeling out, Victor’s right there, his own hips and shoulders swaying as he films every bit of it. Drunk Yuuri doesn’t seem to notice him, so Victor tosses Chris his phone and dances a little closer. He can’t remember the last time he felt like this—flustered, hopeful, willing someone to turn and look at him. 

When Yuuri finally turns, Victor strikes a pose he knows is beautiful. Yuuri blinks at him hazily, once, twice again, and then imitates it perfectly, his body flowing into a line which Victor—baffled, reluctant, astonished—might have to admit is better than his.

Then Yuuri moves to the music, hips swaying, arms curling up, feet swift, and there’s nothing but challenge in his eyes. Victor has to meet that dare, even though his heart is hotter than it’s felt in years. He dances and dances, as he hasn’t done for years, not for an audience, not to evoke awe or surprise them. Right now, Victor’s dancing for himself.

And for Yuuri.

It starts off as a challenge, each of them sliding in moves which they don’t think the other can best, but slowly it transforms. They’re not fighting for dominance now, but talking with their bodies—no longer  _can you?_ but now  _shall we?_ and  _like this?_ They’re circling each other, closer and closer with every step, and Victor can barely remember how to breathe.

Then Yuuri’s eyes go wide with excitement and he veers off to one side, looking like a child who has just been given the best Christmas present in the world. Victor turns to follow him and—

Christophe Giacometti is one of his best friends, one of the reasons Victor isn’t made entirely of ice. He’s also the sort of ridiculous bastard who can somehow magic up a stripper pole in the middle of a Grand Prix banquet and Victor may just have to murder him for it later. 

Chris grins delightedly as Yuuri totters over and puts his hands on the pole. “Need a lesson, Yuuri?” he purrs, as Victor glares at him.

Yuuri stares at him for a moment. Then he says, “Do you?” and swings himself up onto the pole dreamily. Within moments, his legs are over his head and he’s holding his hand out to Victor hopefully.

“Uh,” Victor says. Usually he knows how to communicate, how to flirt even, but Yuuri has charmed away all his words. He doesn’t know how to explain that his dance training covered ballet, jazz, ballet, ballroom, and more ballet, but he has never been on a pole in his life.

Yuuri’s face falls. “No?”

“Yes!” Chris says firmly. “Victor  _loves_ pole dancing, don’t you, Victor? Just show him how it’s done, Yuuri!”

Yuuri’s smile turns bright again. Victor turns to glare at Chris. Something clunks onto the floor at the foot of the pole.

It’s Yuuri’s belt.

Victor looks up in time to witness Yuuri propel himself up and round and over in such a way that his trousers slide the rest of the way off by momentum alone, drifting down to land over Victor’s shoulder. Victor thinks he might have made a noise. He’s definitely beyond words.

Beside him, Chris is bent over with laughter. Some bright spark in the orchestra has started playing Ravel’s Bolero—everyone’s a joker tonight, it seems. Mila’s got her phone pointing directly at his face as Yuuri’s shirt floats down to envelop his head.

It’s the best evening Victor can ever remember having. He bundles the shirt into his arms with the rest of Yuuri’s clothes and gazes up in sheer delight, his pulse beating hard, joy racing through him like lava. Yuuri meets his gaze, eyes hot, locks one leg around the pole and slides his thumbs under the elastic of his underpants. He’s still wearing his tie, which somehow makes it all the sexier.

“Er, Yuuri,” Chris says hurriedly, “did you forget the dance off?”

Yuuri leaves his underwear alone to say firmly, “You’re overdressed.”

“Well, if that’s the only problem,” Chris says, grinning, and starts to strip down. Within moments, he’s on the pole too. Victor watches them wind around each other, jealousy burning in his gut, and has to force himself to take several deep breaths and remember he is surrounded by other people.

How the hell has Yuuri got the strength to support them both like that? What would that strength feel like in bed? Victor licks his lips, swallows hard, feels his cheeks heat up.

Massimo says happily, “He really is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, yes,” Victor agrees before he realises they’re not talking about the same skater. 

Massimo turns to him, with a grin just as wicked as the one Chris is currently sporting. Then his eyes go wide. “Victor,” he breathes.

“What?” How badly is he blushing?

But Yuuri’s sliding down from the pole. He lands lightly, and then brushes past Victor, muttering, “More champagne now!” as he tries to push his way, half-naked, through the crowd.

Victor grabs him and frantically signals a waiter as he tries to coax a warm and wriggly Yuuri back into his clothes. Yuuri’s more interested in dancing on the spot, shimmying his hips and doing something with his abdominal muscles which makes Victor almost choke on his own tongue. Victor gives up at the tie, just rolling it up and tucking it in Yuuri’s pocket.

“Victor,” Yuuri sighs happily.

Chris is still on the pole, but Yuuri’s tugging Victor away towards a bit of open floor, and Victor goes willingly. 

Yuuri waves at the orchestra and calls hopefully, “Tango?”

The orchestra oblige and Yuuri giggles, face bright with happiness.

Victor’s going to die right here. He’s going to melt away to nothing and it will all be because of the way Yuuri’s hips are squirming against his own. 

Yuuri picks up a bottle from a nearby table, swigs from it dreamily, puts it down again and asks Victor seriously, “Can you tango?”

Victor nods mutely, and lets Yuuri lead him into the dance. 

It’s perfect, every step, their bodies in such perfect harmony he’s a little afraid to let go. But that’s for later. Right now, he trusts himself in Yuuri’s hands, lets Yuuri dip him and turn him, never takes his eyes off Yuuri. This is what it must feel like to be something other than ice. He can’t keep the smile from blossoming on his face, and Yuuri smiles back, so happy Victor never wants to let him go. Yuuri’s the warmest thing he’s ever touched and he wants to hold him close, beg him to stay.

But even the most perfect dances must come to an end and Yuuri’s slowing down, the champagne finally sending him off beat. Reluctantly, Victor dances him off the floor and sits him down at one of the tables. Yuuri looks dazed and confused, so Victor puts a finger to his lips and murmurs, “I’m just going to get you a glass of water. Wait for me.”

“Okay,” Yuuri says, but when Victor gets back he’s on his feet, looking around anxiously. He’s knotted his tie around his head and squared his shoulders as if ready to do battle. It’s the most ridiculously adorable thing Victor’s ever seen.

Chris is off the pole and trying to convince him to sit back down. “Victor’s right behind you, Yuuri. You don’t need to go looking for him.”

Victor just has time to put the glass of water down before Yuuri throws himself forward, wrapping his arms around Victor as if he’s the most beautiful and important thing in the world. “Victor,” he says blissfully. “Victor.”

Chris is staring at them, his mouth open and nothing but astonishment on his face.

Yuuri sags against Victor, warm and heavy in his embrace. He’s murmuring something about hot springs, but then he looks up, face alight with joy and demands, “Be my coach, Victor!”

He’d been half-hoping for a proposal, but this is interesting. Very interesting.

Which unfortunately, is when Yakov growls, “Vitya, put him down.”

Victor tightens his arms around Yuuri and sighs. “But, Yakov, can’t I keep him?”

“He’s not a puppy. Give him back to Celestino and let him sleep it off.”

Victor pouts. “I never ask you for anything. Let me have this one—”

Chris says gently, “Yakov’s right. I’m sure he’ll still love you in the morning. Right, Yuuri?”

Yuuri, who has been burrowing deeper into Victor’s arms, looks confused. Celestino Cialdini, who has finally shown up, says, “Yuuri, we have a very early flight tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says without moving. “Okay. Can Victor come with us?”

“Yes,” Victor breathes happily.

“ _No_ ,” says Yakov. 

“I think he’d better stay in Russia,” Celestino says kindly. “Come along now.”

It takes a while. Yuuri has to be coaxed into letting go of Victor, and then into following Celestino to his room. He manages about ten steps before he drifts back in Victor’s direction. Victor hugs him proudly and then they start all over again. 

“Stop encouraging him, idiot,” angry Yuri hisses. Then he stops and gawks at Victor. “What happened to your face, old man?”

“Yuri!” Yakov says sharply. “Go to bed. Vitya, if you really want to help, keep moving.”

It takes them a while to get Yuuri to his room, and then Celestino shuts them out very firmly. As the door swings closed, Victor makes a hand heart and sings out, “Call me in the morning, Yuuri!”

“Vitya, be careful.”

Victor looks at Yakov in confusion. This is no time for caution or restraint. 

Yakov’s looking at him strangely, concern barely masked by his scowl. Then he takes Victor’s elbow and propels him back down the corridor towards his own room. He switches the light on and marches Victor to stand in front of the mirror.

And Victor finally understands why everyone has been staring at him. The snowflakes which have marked his cheeks for years have vanished, melted away by the warmth of Yuuri’s regard.

“Be careful,” Yakov says again, but Victor’s too happy to listen.

 

But then Yuuri doesn’t call him in the morning, or in the week after the final, or the months after that. Instead, he seems to disappear from the ice skating world entirely. By now Victor has worked out that he is Yuuri Katsuki, four times Japanese national champion and two times Junior World Champion, currently training in Detroit.

Eventually Chris sends him a link to an article about Katsuki’s likely retirement after failing to qualify for the rest of the season. Victor gives up hope, stops hunting for news, and wakes up the next morning with the snowflakes back on his cheeks, brighter and sharper than ever before. By the time the Worlds come round, it’s worse—his heart too has faded into ice and he can’t feel a thing. Even Makkachin earns no more than a faint smile now.

Then, halfway through one practice, Yuri Plisetsky comes hurtling across the ice in a cloud of smoke and steam and thrusts his (heavily insulated) phone in front of Victor’s face. He looks angrier than Victor’s ever seen him, but all he says is, “Watch this!”

Victor does, and everything changes again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only name we've got for Chris' boyfriend is Masumi, which is supposedly a placeholder name until he's given a proper one. Since it's not a permanent bit of canon, I eventually decided to run through a list of popular Swiss names from the 90s until I found something phonetically similar. So he's called Massimo here :) Thoughts welcome!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hasetsu is all warmth, even when Yuri's frosts bite hard.

It isn’t until he’s soaking in the hot springs that Yuuri finally feels warm again. This has always been the best place for melting his anxiety—not merely for the physical heat but because it is  _home_ , and he knows no one here judges him for failing. Everything about his home is warm—the springs, the food his mother cooks, the quiet familiar bustle of welcoming others into their home. Even out here in the spring, he’s aware of it, as calm and reassuring as the beat of his own heart.

The frost has clung to him so long this time that it has left new scars, flecks of blue and silver on his knuckles, in lines around his calves, scattered across his battered feet. Sometimes, when the frost bites hardest, he’s ashamed of the marks it leaves upon his skin, but now, in the quiet warmth, he’s proud. They are the battles he’s fought, every one of them. 

His fitness is a disaster, his career’s in shambles, and his dog is dead, but strangely enough, Yuuri feels okay. The edgy, miserable sense of wrongness and inadequacy that has burned in his gut for month has dissipated. It faded as he knelt before Vicchan’s shrine, as he talked to his sister, as he finally let go of the last few years.

Now, he just feels a little empty, a little lost, but it’s not a bad feeling, as such. It feels like something new—as if all that hollowness inside him is simply the potential for something more, something he’s never felt or been before. And alongside it, a familiar need, the one that has driven him for years, carried him across oceans, and to heights that seemed impossible when he last was here. He may not have scaled them—never had the talent to match his hard work—but he came close.

And he’s not ready to give up trying. Not quite. Not yet. 

When he heads back into the inn, warm and relaxed, Minako’s squabbling with the old men over the remote and he glimpses ice on the screen, the familiar silhouettes of skaters he knows and has competed against. He argues with Minako, but doesn’t take it seriously—her love of the town and everyone in it still flowers across her arms in bright purple blooms and he knows that everything else is just a joke. Nothing will ever matter more to her than the roots she’s finally put down here. 

He’s doesn’t linger, though, not even to watch the early rounds of the free skate. He’s knows the rink they’re on—has competed there countless times—can imagine the noise of the crowd and the the glare of the lights and the feel of the perfectly maintained ice beneath his boots. It’s not what he wants now though. He wants something dearer and homier, the place where it all began.

So he runs, as he has so many times in his life, to Ice Castle Hasetsu and Yuuko’s bright, welcoming smile.

And there, on ice still scored from a day’s hard use, with his body awkward and sometimes graceless, with his heart in every movement and not a glint of frost on his skin, he skates.

He’s skating for himself, not for an audience. Maybe that’s why it feels so good. But he’s also skating for something—someone—else. Every time he’s ever practised this routine, he’s found himself thinking of the snowflakes glittering on Victor’s cheeks, of the loneliness they symbolise and that this skate embodies. He follows all the fan gossip, both the kind and the cruel, and has seen the photographs of the snow that vanished and then reappeared on Victor’s face. He has read all the speculation, all the accusations of faking it and celebrity tantrums. But Yuuri knows the touch of frost and he knows this too—Victor Nikiforov presents two faces to the world. On the ice, he skates as if the cold gleaming on his face is the absolute truth; off the ice, he is all smiles and charms and easy laughter. Yuuri knows which face he believes and so this routine, of all the ones he has seen Victor skate over the years, is the one that touches him most. 

Despite the frost, Yuuri loves the ice, and he loves the skater who has always inspired him, the man who seems just as hopelessly beguiled by the thing that hurts him most as Yuuri himself.

So he skates the story that man confides to the ice, and he’s only doing it mostly for himself.

And he does it perfectly. He knows that by the last jump, and he finishes smiling. He can do this. He can master the ice and not be ruled by it.

He doesn’t even mind when his conversation with Yuuko gets derailed by the rest of the Nishigoris. All their laughter and exuberance simply add to what he’s feeling, to that reborn certainty he feels now. He was meant for the ice.

 

He isn’t quite sure how he’s going to get back into competition. A few days here, embraced by the warmth of home, have shown him pretty clearly that returning to Detroit would be a bad idea. He’ll miss Phichit and Celestino and one or two others from the rink, but he needs to be here, where he’s understood. Quite how he’s going to find a coach willing to relocate, he doesn’t know, but before anything else he needs to be here for a while. He skates every evening, watches Yuuko coach her beginners’ class, and demonstrates simple jumps for the triplets and their friends (“Minions,” Nishigori says darkly. “Not friends. Demons from the depths of hell. Put twenty of them in one place and nothing will survive.”)

“Offering birthday parties was your idea,” Yuuko tells him brightly, and adds to Yuuri, “We’re trying to get more kids in. The town’s so quiet these days.”

Yuuri laughs. He loves the girls, but he’s got very little satisfaction from teaching them. He’s really not ready to retire. 

He has to hold onto that love very hard when he finds out about the video and even harder when it goes viral. 

The frost that hits him then is so cold he’s not really surprised when it starts to snow. He’s already shivering, so he really can’t complain when he gets landed with the job of shovelling snow (always the one he and Mari used to fight to get out of). He clears the whole front and side courtyard, even though more snow is falling, but then has to start again. Giving up, he heads inside to warm up as much as he can.

And gets floored by a very large poodle.

A very familiar looking poodle.

A poodle whose picture is in several of the posters on his bedroom walls.

He hears his dad say something cheerful, but the only thing that registers is the mention of the garden.

Yuuri runs, hurtling outside so fast he thinks he may have knocked things over in his wake. It doesn’t matter.

Because when he gets outside, there’s a man standing under the cherry tree, gazing out over Hasetsu. He turns at the sound of the door, his long coat flaring out as eddies of snow and sakura petals swirl around him. 

“Victor?” Yuuri chokes out. “What are you doing here?”

“Yuuri,” Victor Nikiforov— _the_ Victor Nikiforov—purrs, holding out his hand and flicking his hair from his eyes, the snowflakes on his cheeks glittering even more than the ones in the air around him. “Starting today, I’m going to be your new coach. You’re going to get to the Grand Prix Final and you’re going to win.”

And he smiles.

Yuuri has the sinking feeling he may have just frozen his own feet to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait--my muses got sidetracked.
> 
> Victor doesn't make his entrance in the hot spring in this, simply because he doesn't want Yuuri to see his frozen heart.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aw, look who shows up.

This isn’t quite going how Victor hoped it would. He fully imagined that by now Yuuri would be in his arms and they’d both be melting. After that, of course, would come glory and endless victories, joining together to rule over the ice which has always ruled them.

He hadn’t expected the running away screaming, or being bundled inside by a nice but brisk woman saying something about watching his step until he’s inside on the non-slip flooring—as if a bit of icy paving could fell _him_ —and offering him food. And all the time Yuuri is there, hovering and aghast, but also staring, his eyes wide and amazed. It’s not the same melting gaze he’d given Victor at the banquet, not so ablaze with joy and need and desire, but—

Yuuri’s looking at Victor, as if he can’t look away.

Victor honestly can’t tell if that a good sign or not.

Maybe he’s just shy. Maybe he doesn’t want to pounce on Victor in front of his family. Victor doesn’t really understand families—real ones, rather than the ones forged through competition, wincing at each other’s blisters, sharing canteen food and grumbling about Yakov even as they take turns to nag him about his blood pressure. So Victor waits until they’re alone and tries again, his heart pounding in his chest, hotter than it’s been in months.

Yuuri runs away screaming again.

Victor’s very relieved he isn’t the one with anxiety frosts, because he’d be covered in ice from the outside as well as the inside right now.

Except, lying there that night, on a strange bed in a strange country, with only Makkachin to cling to and tears burning in his eyes, he realises something. Yuuri had been shocked to see him, panicky and distant.

But after the first few minutes, he hadn’t been frost-coated. His cheeks had been bright with blushes and his eyes wide, but there hadn’t been the faintest gleam of frost on his cuffs or the tips of his hair. Whatever was making Yuuri so flustered, it wasn’t fear.

Oh. Okay. Victor can work with that.

Smiling, he rests his face in Makkachin’s fur and goes to sleep.

 

It isn’t easy. Yuuri slips through his fingers at every turn, sincere, awestruck, humble and yet—and yet—every now and then showing flashes of pure steel below the frost. Victor pushes him hard, just to see what will happen—how Yuuri will break out from behind his wall of frost. The results are unexpected. Yuuri gets flustered by flirting, tackles brutal reconditioning with calm dedication, dotes on Makkachin even though Victor’s seen a picture of little round Yuuri with an adorable puppy that brought tears to Victor’s eyes at the thought of losing his darling Makka. All the things which _should_ panic him into nervous frosts _don’t_.

But mention competitive ice skating, which Yuuri is phenomenally good at, and he starts glittering and shivering like he’s taken up napping in fridges.

Victor doesn’t understand it and it’s driving him to desperation.

It’s not the only thing that is currently making Victor desperate. Also included on that list are Yuuri’s blushes, Yuuri’s thighs, the way Yuuri’s body bends at the _barre_ , Yuuri flushed and sweaty from a run, Yuuri coming out of the hot spring, soft and warm and smiling with a robe snuggled around him as if he was a gift for Victor to unwrap, Yuuri laughing at the triplets, Yuuri’s accent catching on Victor’s name, Yuuri in the morning, bleary-eyed and grumpy, his pyjamas sagging more and more as his body returns to its strongest form, Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri.

Victor isn’t sure how much longer he can bear this without letting it show, but he’s _Victor Nikiforov_. He doesn’t lose, even when he takes risks. He’s going to stick it out until he _wins_.

He’s no longer quite sure what that victory will look like—what, if anything, will satisfy him.

 

The ice, as always, is the best place to let his cold heart beat. While Yuuri’s out there in the sunshine, running himself thin again, Victor drifts across the ice alone. He isn’t ready for Yuuri to see this, not yet. He’s got a suspicion that Yuuri would watch this and just know everything Victor isn’t saying.

Or maybe not.

He’s going to give it to Yuuri in the end, after all. He just has to polish the rawness away first, split it apart so it’s not his entire heart on offer.

One path is fire, the other ice. One path is angry—a tale of seduction and abandonment; the other is cold and yearning, love and need locked inside the most icy of shields. He wants to give them both to Yuuri, and then run away before Yuuri pushes them away and freezes the last of Victor’s heart with one soft gesture.

“Hey, Victor!”

Broken out of his own circling thoughts, Victor blinks. He hadn’t been expecting _that_ voice.

“So you _are_ here,” another familiar voice chimes in. “I thought Yuri here just needed an excuse to take some time off.”

“Only losers take time off, hag!”

Victor says airily, because this is fun and easy, “I take time off and I never lose. What are you both doing here?” An alarming thought crosses his mind. “Ah, is Yakov with you?”

“Just us,” Mila says cheerfully. “Yuri needed someone to fly with, so I thought I might—”

“She got dumped.”

Yuuri’s hanging back, watching them with a bewildered fascination. They’ve both got suitcases, and Yuri’s still looking groggy around the edges, so they must have come straight from the airport. They’ve clearly found time to go shopping, though—Yuri’s got some tiger-printed monstrosity swamping his narrow frame and Mila’s got a new tote bag printed with two adorable cartoon squids doing something Victor sincerely hopes is a waltz.

Mila’s mouth narrows. “Yuri wants to ask you for something, don’t you, baby.”

“Shut up.” Yuri glares at her and then transfers his stare to Victor, with six times the intensity. There’s smoke coming off the ends of his hair. Victor, well aware of Yuuri and the Nishigori triplets watching intently, feeds the fire. “That’s not a happy face.”

Mila giggles, pink sparks rising in the air around her.

Poking Yuri until he goes up in smoke feels like being back at home again. For a few moments, Victor is painfully homesick. When Yuri proposes a contest, he yearns for home—to go back to Mila’s sparkling laughter, Georgi’s empathy, Yuri’s fiery bluster, and Yakov yelling at him with smoke literally coming out of his ears.

Then he looks at Yuuri and he can’t leave. He’s about to refuse when he notices something.

There’s no frost on Yuuri. He looks annoyed, but there’s something else there—a willingness to win.

Well, then. A contest it is.

 

Of course, by midnight, Yuuri’s on the ice, glittering with worry under the low lights. Victor watches him for hours, even after the Nishigoris entrust him with the key and slip off home. Victor has never watched someone else skate for so long before—he always wants to get out there and challenge them. He can watch Yuuri, though, tracking how the frost fades over time.

When Yuuri comes off the ice, warm with sweat and exertion, Victor wants to hold out his arms. Instead, he turns the rink lights off while Yuuri changes into his shoes and then helps him lock up. They walk home through the cool quiet night, neither of them speaking. The sea is rolling softly onto shore and there’s a breeze, rolling off the land with the faintest scent of city smog. Victor wants to tell Yuuri how different it is from home, talk about St Petersburg and the people in it he misses.

Victor wonders if Yuuri will let him take his hand. He doesn’t risk it.

At last, Yuuri says softly, “He’s so young and so brilliant. No wonder he’s confident.”

“You were pretty good at his age,” Victor points out.

Yuuri shrugs one shoulder, dismissing that. “I got worse.”

“No, really,” Victor says. “Youth means inexperience, and he’s never faced a real challenge.”

Yuuri sighs a little. Victor can see the glimmer of frost along Yuuri’s cheekbone.

He really wants to take his hand. Instead, he says cheerfully, “Now you, on the other hand—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Victor sighs. “What shall we talk about then? Shall we talk about me? I was better than than Yurio when I was fifteen, you know.”

“I know,” Yuuri says, and it sounds, well, fond.

Victor sneaks him a look. Yuuri isn’t looking at him, but up at the floodlit castle. It’s a clear night and late enough that there are few lights in the houses to dull the moonlight.

Yuuri Katsuki in frost and moonlight is so beautiful Victor can’t even resent the way Yuuri keeps freezing his heart.

But the next morning he looks at the back his hand and sees a tiny patch of bare skin where a snowflake was yesterday. Nothing else has changed. His heart is still icy and his face marked with snow, but one of them has melted. 

 

He still assigns _Fire_ to Yuuri and _Ice_ to Yurio (such a blessing, that nickname, and he knows Mila agrees). He announces it off the ice in full anticipation of a flare-up (no point in making extra work for the Nishigoris by letting Yurio melt the ice) and is fully rewarded.

In the sessions that follow, Victor wonders if he’s made a mistake. First there’s the pork cutlet bowl thing (Mila takes him drinking that night and doesn’t make fun of him once) and then the growing sheen of frost the closer they get to the day of the contest.

But there’s also the way Yuuri works at it, digging away at something which clearly makes him uncomfortable as if working out the right feelings is the hardest part of this rather then the final touch which will take it from dazzling to record-breaking. He doesn’t seem to notice the cruelness of the step sequences or the dizzying speed of the spins.

Yurio does, of course, and Victor sees him take it in and get angry in a whole new way, one that isn’t contained in outbursts of flame and ash but in the grace of his outstretched leg and the elevation of his jumps.

Victor’s about to congratulate himself when Yuuri notices Yurio’s jumps and is inspired to, well, ice over his skates and fall down for the next ten minutes, which makes Yurio rage with some churning mixture of triumph and worry that turns the ice slick with slush.

Victor sighs, covers his face with his hand, and kicks them both out to try standing under a waterfall without either evaporating it or freezing it solid.

Mila says, “You’re doing something amazing here, you know. They’ve both come so far.”

Victor sighs. He’s not convinced he’s solving either of their problems.

“That’s because you’re a terrible coach,” Mila tells him.

“I just want them to be their best.”

“You gave them a week to get there,” Mila points out. “But, hey, if your heart’s set on coaching now, you could help me with my triple flip.”

Much later, when both Yuris have trailed in, damp but calmer, she’s the one who asks, “So, what about costumes? I know Yurio didn’t bring any.”

“And mine need to be fire retardant,” Yurio mutters.

“Not if you assert some self-control,” Victor tells him cheerfully and leans back in time to dodge the flames.

 

Mila had told him it was excessive when he shipped over all his old costumes, but even she looks impressed when she sees what they’ve chosen. She’s skated already herself, offering a demonstration as part of the whole show the Nishigoris have constructed to build towards the final contest, and Victor had caught a glimpse of her on ice, all verve and delight, light exploding in the air around her. She claims she’s come backstage to help Yuuko, but Victor’s pretty sure it’s pure nosiness.

Yuuko’s raving over Yurio’s costume. Victor’s not going to get that excited, but he’s pleased with the choice Yurio made. The routine is pure, selfless yearning—agape—encased in fragile ice, and Yurio has chosen something which hints at armour, silver and white and elegant. Clearly, he found understanding in the end. He looks more like ice than fire, and Victor hopes he can hold to it, conquering his rage to create beauty from self-control.

Yuri’s choice of costume, on the other hand, is just fascinating. Victor had once worn it to contrast with his own fairness, but on Yuuri it accentuates his dark hair and eyes, makes him look lean and dangerous, with just that hint of scarlet making promises Victor’s stopped hoping Yuuri will keep. Maybe he will get to see that first Yuuri again—the one who seduced him so effortlessly, or perhaps the one he knows is there, despite all the evidence to the contrary—the Yuuri who is powerful and seductive and unstoppable. The Yuuri who is—

Oh. Never mind fantasy Yuuris.

This real Yuuri is glittering head to toe with frost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long hiatus. I had plans to bribe myself into quickly finishing an original project by putting this on hold, but then I got the flu, my boiler broke, and my muses went belly-up. Apologies.


End file.
